Cannabis Insurance Under the Influence

The cannabis insurance market is a growing niche that’s gaining attention from both inside and outside the industry. M.J. Hall & Company, a San Francisco-based insurance broker, recently began offering cannabis companies in California and Arizona an admitted product that covers D&O liability, employment liability practices, and fiduciary responsibility. ALKEME, situated in Ladera Ranch, recently purchased Pauli-Shaw Insurance Agency, which specializes in a few sectors, including cannabis. Burns & Wilcox, based in Farmington Hills, has appointed Jason Scheurle as its national product leader for cannabis, where he will be in charge of creating and expanding the company’s commercial portfolio of cannabis products across the country.

Big-name insurance agencies are also flocking to this specialized market. Aon created Greensite Insurance last year to provide management liability insurance to cannabis businesses. Specialty Program Group, an MGU platform owned by Hub International, owns SafeHerb, which was created in 2018. Acrisure is currently the parent company of Cannabis Connect Insurance, which was created in 2016, due to its acquisition of Bozzuto Insurance Services in 2018. And in 2017, Lockton opened its cannabis practice.

In the background, there’s a multibillion-dollar cannabis commerce company that’s quietly expanding into insurance. At Coverager, we call this phenomenon insurance under the influence® – except this saying is about to get more literal. This research report examines the billion-dollar opportunity that is cannabis insurance.